The world’s first approved swarm power plant has gone into operation on the Rhine! The aim is to harness the Rhine’s current to drive 124 turbines. Similar p...
I watched the video, and it’s pretty impressive so far, though for specific use cases i.e. not in all rivers at all spots, AT ALL. But for Fast moving spots in rivers that have the required depth (which is not a ton of depth), These seem to have a lot of potential for very low impact power harvesting with few drawbacks. They slow down the flow of water a bit but for areas that are somewhat steep that is probably more of a benefit than a drawback. They are clearly way way less impactful than for example building a dam. And so far they seem to be fairly thoughtfully designed to avoid contaminating the area or harming the existing fish and so forth.
They slow down the flow of water a bit but for areas that are somewhat steep that is probably more of a benefit than a drawback.
Slowing a river down raises the water level, which can risk flooding. Every section of river has to let through a certain amount of water per second, and slowing the water down means you need a bigger cross-sectional area to get the same throughput so the water level rises. This can create a feedback spiral because a higher water level slows the river down further because there is less height difference with further upstream and thus less force driving the water downstream against the friction of the riverbanks.
Luckily it seems these turbines can be removed quickly, so unless the engineers fuck up they shouldn’t increase flood risk.
I watched the video, and it’s pretty impressive so far, though for specific use cases i.e. not in all rivers at all spots, AT ALL. But for Fast moving spots in rivers that have the required depth (which is not a ton of depth), These seem to have a lot of potential for very low impact power harvesting with few drawbacks. They slow down the flow of water a bit but for areas that are somewhat steep that is probably more of a benefit than a drawback. They are clearly way way less impactful than for example building a dam. And so far they seem to be fairly thoughtfully designed to avoid contaminating the area or harming the existing fish and so forth.
Slowing a river down raises the water level, which can risk flooding. Every section of river has to let through a certain amount of water per second, and slowing the water down means you need a bigger cross-sectional area to get the same throughput so the water level rises. This can create a feedback spiral because a higher water level slows the river down further because there is less height difference with further upstream and thus less force driving the water downstream against the friction of the riverbanks.
Luckily it seems these turbines can be removed quickly, so unless the engineers fuck up they shouldn’t increase flood risk.